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Wednesday, February 20, 2013

Dinner and a Movie

Editor's Note: Well, we've put Doc Gus to bed with a cool cloth for his head and another shot of laudanum for his fever dreams.It's good for that, right?Anyway, we're sure that the only unsavory things happening at Aimie's will be on your plate. Dine at your own risk.﻿

The Kitsch.

"The waiter," I kibbutz to my Aunt and Uncle, "looks like he writes humorless folk songs for sparsely attended open-mic nights around town."

"I think I'm going to write a short story about a serial killer based around him."

The man, perhaps in his late 30s or early 40s, had an obsequious manner, a bird-like nose, dead, black eyes and spindly fingers. He was painstakingly polite, in the manner of a certain hospitality worker from 20th century cinematic canon we are all familiar with:

Too old to be a college student in this sleepy upstate New York town (conveniently near a railroad - which always hinged as a plot-point in any serial killer mystery I would write) and slinging some of the worst hash I have eaten in a long time.

"Do not get the steak," warned Uncle Stretch. "The sandwiches are edible."

"Barely," interjected my Aunt.

Uncle Stretch, "but definitely do not get any of the entrées."

"I'll have the steak, medium please," I said, a few moments later, "and can I have onion rings please."

A salad fit for United Airlines (during the "free food" era) comes out minutes later, along with a glass of wine fit for my palette circa 1991 (when I was 16).

Some time later, a steak, half rare and half well done, as if taken from the freezer to the stove was placed before me (at a tense point in the film, no less) with a side of soggy, freezer to deep fryer onion rings. Sysco's not-quite-finest.

Food this bad must have a dozen stories behind it - good food is made by people too busy to get into trouble, usually. "How do you make such good food?" Hard work, they say, and practice. Boring!

So... much... kitsch.

One can only make conjecture as to the distractions facing the kitchen that they could turn and burn so much awful slop: perhaps the cooks are distracted by international gangsters - their work a cover for drugs packaging or endless hours spent "leveling up" WOW characters for sale on eBay.

Perhaps one of the cooks is the nefarious Nigerian Prince I always am greeted by, in my spam mailbox.

Maybe they are running girls or a sweat-shop out of the bowels of the theatre, under the unsuspecting blue-haired noses of the senior citizens who frequent Aimie's.

Perhaps my server, the deferential pony-tailed man, rules this Aimie's empire with fear: everyone knows what goes on in that basement, but no one wants to talk about it. Too afraid to leave, too terrified to change it: